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Posted on 12/20/2004 9:15:32 PM PST by CHARLITE
Char
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It was published on September 1, 2001
Fuggedaboudit?
I'll worry after we've fought our sixth or seventh civil war. Until then, any comparison to the decline of Rome is a stretch.
That's an interesting story about the wild hogs. If I had heard about using corn twenty years ago I wouldn't have wasted so much money taking dates to expensive restaurants.
Yes we are going the way of Rome.
The Persians army came to the gates of Rome. When they found out the number of citizen solders prepared to fight, they turned around and went home. About 100 years later the Romans no longer cared for their culture enough to fight for it. Thus the Persians sacked and defeated Rome.
When a people do not care about their culture enough to fight for it, they will be defeated by another culture. This is very evident in history.
The enemies of Western Civilization are partnered in spirit with the Islamofascists. Socialists decry what we are and want to see our constitutional form of government with three branches replaced.
Some of the anarchist-socialists are willing to admit that this is their end goal, others get angry and upset that you question their patriotism. They are socialists first and have partnered with the enemies of America on numerous occasions.
That is one quote from this article that really stuck out and with which I have strong agreement - Like something out of an Ayn Rand story.
Unfortunately our Society appears to be doing this and something else that I think warrants inclusion in the Quote. It could read:
Nothing but evil can come from a society bent upon coercion, the confiscation of property, and the degradation of the productive and the exaltation of the manipulative
You mean the Germans?
Persia never sacked Constanople.
We are already in the midst of our second Civil War if the election violence from the left is any indication.
Al Gore's legacy was to see to it that we never have a peaceful change of power in this country again.
Shots were fired into GOP campaign offices, cars were keyed, power was shut off, tires were deflated on election day, campaign signs were torched on peoples' yards, bricks were thrown through windows, swastikas were painted on homes...
The BIGGEST news about all of this was that it did NOT make the national news.
Expect them to step up their efforts even more in future elections.
Comparisons of America to Rome are baseless. One obvious, major difference between the two is that America is not an empire.
bump
Now you all understsnd what I mean when I say:" All part of the big plan".
Me too.
As my coffee mug says:
Warning: Irish temper and German stubbornness
This isn't true. Businessmen in Republican Rome were the social equivalents of trial lawyers today - wealthy buccaneers, sneered at by all the respectable folk.
The city even had mass production of some consumer items and a stock market.
Um, no. There is no surviving evidence of what we would recognize as a Roman "stock market".
Why did Rome decline and fall? The record is abundantly clear on this point.
The record is abundantly clear as to what happened, but nowhere near clear on why. One alternate theory is the Pirenne Thesis, which holds that, despite changes in governmental control, the Mediterranean world was basically okay until the coming of the Arabs in the eighth century, because they destroyed the maritime economy.
Early in the process, a politician named Clodius ran for the office of tribune on a "free wheat for the masses" platform and won.
Clodius? Eventually, yeah, but what about Saturninus or the Gracchi, a generation or two before?
The government responded by imposing penalties for trading in gold, especially for exporting it, much as Franklin Roosevelt did in 1933.
The imperial government banned the exportation of gold because the Roman Empire had a massive trade imbalance with India. Bullion was going east in exchange for luxury goods, and the Mediterranean world was being drained of specie.
Not only did he impose across-the-board wage and price controls in relative peacetime, but he also resigned from office, in the year 305. Nearly 17 centuries later, Richard Nixon would become the first American president to impose peacetime wage and price controls and also our first chief executive to resign from office.
Diocletian didn't "resign" like Nixon did; he retired in order to permit orderly succession under the Tetrarchy. This comparison is facile.
The once-proud Roman army, which had always repelled the barbarians before, now wilted in the face of opposition. Why risk life and limb to defend a corrupt and decaying society?
By 410 AD, the "once-proud Roman army" was itself the band of mercenaries which plundered Rome. National armed forces didn't exist in the sense which we understand them in the fifth century AD.
The Visigoths (410 AD) and the Vandals (455 AD) sacked Rome, then the Ostrogoths deposed the last emperor of the west (476 AD). The Persians never seriously threatened Rome after Trajan invaded Parthia and seized the capital Ctesiphon (116 AD).
As for Constantinople, it was sacked only twice: by the 4th Crusade in 1204 and by the Ottoman Turks in 1453.
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Since I am an Irish German, it is extremely unlikely that I would go the way of Rome. For me to turn into an Italian at my age would be really weird.